Paul continues his discourse on
discipleship and brings us to this epiphany.
News Flash! It’s not all about me.
Each of us may respond to God’s grace
differently and that’s just fine. Some
might respond by singing and shouting and praising the Lord. You might be going saw, saw, saw, pound,
pound, pound, build a house for Jesus that won’t fall down.
I might be singing and sawing and
shouting and pounding and that’s just fine.
We will not all respond to the grace and mercy of God that we know in
Christ Jesus in the same way.
We should not judge each other’s
response. Maybe we hold Sunday in the
highest regard and make it a very special day.
Maybe every day is special to us, so much so that it doesn’t make sense
to distinguish any day from another.
Both are good responses to God’s grace and mercy.
Both are just part of each of us
living out our discipleship. Paul tells
us that we don’t live or die unto ourselves.
That’s good biblespeak for
it’s not all about me.
We live and die unto the Lord. It is all about bringing glory to God, but in
bringing him glory, God gives us considerable freedom and latitude and endless
choices. Suddenly, all of our decisions matter. You
and I may decide and respond differently to God’s love, grace, and mercy but so
long as we are convinced in our own mind that this is the way to bring glory to
God, then it’s just fine, well sort of…
Remember back in chapter 12
we discussed being transformed by the renewing of our minds? We
need to be convinced in our renewed mind of how we will respond
to God’s mercy and grace. Too often we
are convinced in our carnal mind of how we are to live out our salvation. Too often the mind shaped by the patterns of
the world wants to govern our discipleship.
It is that renewed mind that guides our steps. When
we give ourselves body and mind to the Lord, the Lord directs our steps, gives
us our words, and establishes our thoughts.
What you do in response to God’s love
might look strange to me, but I am counseled not to judge you. God is the only judge. We are not entitled to judge his
servants. We examine ourselves. We will stand before the Lord at some point,
but we are not to sit in the judgment seat.
We will stand before the Lord knowing that his blood has taken away all our
sin, but we will account for the lives that we lived in the freedom that he
gave us. Did we respond to his great
love with everything that we are?
God alone is entitled to judge. Who am I to judge another’s servant?
Paul embarked upon a discourse of
clean and unclean food. That topic is
not an issue in this modern century, especially in this country. You may or may not want to know what is in
that hotdog that you ate at the picnic, but it probably was not sacrificed to
an idol before it was packaged, shipped to the store, and then charred on the
grill.
But Paul’s discussion is not about
food. It is about our response to God’s
mercy and how we work out our salvation as Paul put it when he wrote to the church in
Philippi. We have choices, many choices,
that we make in living out our salvation.
Choices of this century are:
· Do I drink alcohol or not?
· Do I use tobacco products?
· What do I put into this temple that I call my
body?
· Sweetened or unsweetened tea?
You can overdo it with any of these,
but in and of themselves, alcohol, tobacco, sugar, coffee, tea, or dark
chocolate are neither good or bad, holy or unholy, clean or unclean. Unless…
Unless, in your personal convictions,
coffee is no good for you in your Christian walk. In that case, to you it is unclean and you
should treat it accordingly. You do not
need to impose that belief on anyone else, but if you believe it, then live it
whole-heartedly.
In today’s world, some have rejected
modern devices and electronic media as unclean.
There are days that I am about ready to join their ranks when the
acrimony and vitriol hit new highs, or perhaps new lows is more accurate.
But then I think about posting
pictures of my grandkids or seeing your kids dressed as superheroes or in
1970’s fashions or hitting a homerun. I
think just how awesome is it that someone in China and Russia and even Burns
Flat reads my messages, prayers, and devotions that I post online.
I am convinced in my own mind that I can use this medium to produce good fruit for the Lord. I am fully convinced!
Now I see others that post nice
Christian messages all the time, they like my posts that praise the Lord, they like
my pictures of the what I call the Burns Flat Cross, and occasionally they even
quote scripture. Many of these people do
not come to worship, tithe or make any kind of offering, join in the many
service projects and ministries that are underway just about any time of year,
or do much else to respond to God’s love.
My carnal mind wants to judge
them. My renewed mind
tells me that they alone will answer for their response to God’s mercy and
grace and God does not need a consulting opinion from me. That doesn’t mean that I don’t continue to
share, invite, encourage, and show others how to worship God in Spirit and live
in the truth; but judging another believer is not in my job description.
I challenge you to find a week in the
past decade where I have not invited someone to come worship with us, serve the
Lord with us, or grow in God’s grace with us.
That’s not going to stop. That’s
not going to change. Nobody’s opinion will get me off course here. Their response belongs to them and the Holy
Spirit and I have not been appointed judge over either.
Paul says blessed is the person who does not condemn himself by what he approves. We each decide for ourselves with our renewed
mind what is good and pleasing and perfect for having surrendered ourselves
fully to Christ, we know God’s will.
My choices are also influenced by how
they impact other people. That does not
mean that I am a people pleaser. Believe
me, there are plenty of people who are not pleased with me. But I am called to be a God pleaser. To please God, my choices are not only for my
enrichment and edification but also for those of my brothers and sisters in
Christ.
It’s not all about me.
Elsewhere
in his letters, Paul counseled his readers to regard others more highly than
ourselves. In this chapter of Romans, he
charges us not to become a stumbling block for another believer. If someone is struggling with
something—anything—and I flaunt the fact that I am not, then I probably am not
helping this believer work through this issue.
I am not being helpful in his or her
discipleship and thus am not being governed by the renewed mind that should be
making very deliberate and mindful choices. I am not going to change my belief,
but I won’t exercise my belief so as to hurt my fellow believer.
We not only run the race for
ourselves, we help others along the way.
In the least, we don’t put obstacles in their paths.
We carry our own load but we carry each other’s burdens. We don’t need to add burdens to others by our
choices.
It’s not all about me!
We have been given very wide
boundaries in living out our salvation. We
are to do so in love and thereby we will fulfill the law, but we are called to consider our steps with
regard to what we firmly believe. We are
to live in faith and not fear.
We must be convinced that the
decisions that we make, the things that we do, and the things that we will not
do bring glory to God and do not create stumbling blocks to another believer’s
faith.
Isaiah prophesied that one would come who would bring freedom
to the captives. This was more than
freedom from Babylon. This was and is complete
freedom to live. The prophesied one
came. His name is Jesus. He liberated us from sin and from death and
wants us to live to the full.
That’s impossible to do with our
carnal mind in charge. We will stumble
and will be obstacles to other believers.
But with our lives given completely to God in response to his incredible
mercy and grace, we embark on this course of transformation, so much of which
depends upon letting God have his way in shaping our thoughts.
When we live with a renewed mind we
will know exactly what God wants us to do.
We will know and we will live by faith.
Living by rules, or trying to guess what God wants, or just living to
gratify ourselves or please others is sin.
It misses the mark of bring glory to God and living to the full.
If we do anything but live by faith,
we have sinned. What you do in faith and
what I do in faith may be different, and that is just fine. Just as our gifts are different, so too we
live out our faith differently.
Can a body of believers that differ in so many ways still be a body in one accord?
Absolutely! The things that we
differ in are what might be classified as disputable matters. They are in a category of things that we
don’t have to agree on.
We agree that there is one true
God. We agree that Jesus Christ is his
Son and by his blood our sins are washed away.
We are forgiven! We believe that
God’s Spirit is with us.
We believe that we are to be known as
followers of Jesus—disciples—by our love.
We have been given life, seek life to the full in this age, and have the
promise of life eternal.
We believe that there is one church
and Jesus is the head of that church.
Regardless of the name on the side of the building or the way you baptize
or take communion, we are one body. We
have some differences. Some of them seem
big. Some seem to work to create
friction in the universal church, but we who follow Jesus are not here to add
to that friction by judging other believers.
We are not to judge another servant in
how he responds to God’s mercy and grace with his renewed mind. We don’t judge her choices in a life given
completely to God—body and mind—as a living sacrifice.
We need to be fully convinced in our
own renewed mind of our decisions as we respond to God’s mercy and grace.
Fully convinced! We consider our steps.
I don’t want you to have the image of
walking across ice on a pond listening for cracks along the way in living out
your salvation. Our steps are considered
but we are not timid. We know the course
that God has set for us for we have given him our lives to include our
minds. We are not brash but we are
purposeful.
In the course of living my faith in
response to God’s incredible mercy, I am fully convinced of three things. This is Tom being fully convinced in his own
mind and I am not asking you to adopt this thinking, but don’t be surprised
when you hear it from me time and again because I am fully convinced.
In the wide boundaries of living out
my salvation, I am called to trust,
obey,
and love. I am convinced of these things.
I am called to trust God completely,
even when and especially when he takes me out of my comfort zone.
I am called to obey God completely,
even when his way is not my first, second, or forty-second choice.
I am called to love God by loving
others, even when those others don’t like me that much or wish that I would
just go away.
There are some things that are not as
clear to me in my transformation process, but I can trust, obey, and love fully
convinced in my own mind that this is God’s will and purpose for me in my
life. I can take bold but deliberate
steps. I can be Christ’s disciple and
bring glory to God.
I challenge all of us to examine those
things of which we are fully convinced in our own renewed minds. Yes, we are still in the transformation
process, but we are making progress. The
fruit of being a living sacrifice and being transformed by the renewing of our
minds is that we will know what God’s will is.
It is a good and pleasing and perfect
will and we can know it!
Examine what you know God has called
you to do. Be fully convinced in your
own mind. Live by faith. Do this without focusing on how others
respond to God in their transformation process.
It’s not all about me, but some of it
is. Some of following Jesus is all about
what I am firmly convinced of in my own renewed mind. We need to know and be fully convinced of how
we are to respond to God’s incredible mercy and grace.
Take this week to dig into your
discipleship. Know with certainty how
you are to respond to God’s love and live it fully convinced of your choices
not worried if it’s like everyone else’s response and and do it without judging
everyone else’s response to God’s mercy and grace.
Live in faith!
Amen.
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